


Above, In, Between

by LunalitSol



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Prompt Fic, Romance, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, They’re both bi and hella in love it’s basically canon ok, also some angst whoops, ish, mostly compliant though, references to season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 16:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20509922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunalitSol/pseuds/LunalitSol
Summary: "What better way was there to pick up the pieces than together?"





	Above, In, Between

**Author's Note:**

  * For [just_chiara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_chiara/gifts).

> Based on the prompts from Chiara on tumblr of "'a hug from behind' or 'things you said through your teeth'". I did both, because of course I did <3 Wrote about half of this before season 3 dropped and I didn't bother changing a couple things to reflect canon because I preferred my version of events, but this *is* mostly canon compliant through the end of season three with some spoilers. General warnings for references to canon content, potential suicidality, canon drug abuse, etc.

“Because I’m fucking jealous, Zach, is that what you want to hear?”

The words were said through closed teeth, but Alex’s eyes were wide open, angry and wounded. There was tension in all the lines of him. 

The world came to a screeching halt. 

What the fuck was that supposed to mean?

He asked Alex as much, heart thumping madly at the anger and hurt that twisted his friend’s face in response. Why had he started this conversation again? 

“Fuck you, Zach. Go the fuck away.”

And Zach, for all he’d changed this last year, did. 

How was he supposed to stay?

It had been one kiss. Or one time with a few kisses, but the important part was that they’d both been beyond exhausted, raw and sitting too close to one another, Alex’s room and house as dark as the night outside. It had been only a handful of hours since Tyler’s aborted school shooting, and Zach had insisted on staying at Alex’s. Neither of them could focus on much of anything. 

And then. 

Somehow, they’d gotten even closer. Eyes caught up on one another, breath passing between them, and Zach wasn’t entirely sure who had leaned in first. He knew he’d been very still, maybe an inch from Alex’s lips. Alex had closed the gap. 

It had been need and warmth and pulsing, aching want. An electric current Zach had, just once, allowed himself to get swept up in. 

The kissing had escalated, heat thick and growing, their hands hard on one another, skin and teeth and wet and release, and then, just as quickly as it had begun, it had all stopped. 

“Fuck.” Alex’s voice had been self-recriminating, a hint of hysteria tucked beneath. “I can’t- I need to talk to Jessica.”

And Zach had leaned into him, heart a hammer, squeezed his arm too gently, and said with all the steadiness he could gather, “Dude, breathe. Let’s get some sleep.”

Alex had passed out soon after, too close to Zach, not close enough, and Zach followed suit some time later, excuses for the lapse, for allowing what had passed between them to pass, already crawling up his throat. Curling up under his tongue with the taste of Alex. 

They never did talk about it- not really. When they were cleaning up breakfast the morning after, Zach had told him obliquely, too cavalierly, that he could blame _it _ on the sleep deprivation, the hormones, the craziness of the night, but that had been the last time either he or Alex had referenced what happened between them. After all, Jess and Alex had broken up the next day, Jess confessing to her own indiscretion, and despite everything else, Alex had been heartbroken. He definitely didn't need more drama or complication. Neither of them did. What had Zach been thinking in the first place? He didn't know if he could give Alex what he deserved in any kind of relationship even if there was something real between them- which there probably wasn't. Which there couldn't be.

Zach threw himself into gearing up for the football season, into his friendship with Justin, into Chloe- and shit, had she needed a friend.

And so it had gone. One minute, his friendship with Alex, the possibilities and care between them, was one of the most substantial parts of his world. And the next thing Zach knew, Jess had cheated on Alex, and the fallout was so fucking fresh. More importantly, Chloe was pregnant. Fucking pregnant. Zach had to be a good friend, a platonic one and only that, to Alex in whatever time they managed to get, and he had to focus on being a support system to Chloe, escorting her into the Planned Parenthood one city over with his hand on her shoulder. 

The months had folded into themselves, and so had Zach. Like a collapsing accordion. He’d had secrets and promises to keep- too many. And Alex’s anger just seemed to keep growing, festering. He walked around like an open wound. Physically, he’d made even more progress than before, so much that the cane was only a recurring character in his day-to-day, and then was gone entirely. Otherwise, though?

Zach made fewer and fewer appearances by his side, and vice versa. He had to help Chloe. He had to support Justin and Jess and even fucking Clay and Tyler. He was there for Alex, always would be, but the space kept growing between them. Alex started working out with other people, started using, so often had excuses not to see him beyond a study session here and a shallow chat at school there. Meanwhile, the electricity between them grew dangerously, and Zach steered further away. He cancelled PT sessions. He walked too close to Chloe, contemplated what she’d be like to kiss even when it was clear he’d never have the chance. 

Alex started shit with Monty and his lackeys any time the opportunity arose, and Zach couldn’t convince him to leave well enough alone no matter how hard he tried, so he stopped trying. Alex wanted to push him away after all they’d been through? Fine. 

Fine. 

But it wasn’t, was it? And the truth was hard to hide even before Bryce- 

The words unsaid between them piled high, until even just trying to unearth the bond they’d had less than a year before seemed fruitless, like trying to hang a picture during an earthquake or clean up debris while a storm hovered on the horizon- he couldn’t hope to set things right. 

Or maybe it was only fruitless if he didn’t try.

If he didn’t pick the words up one by one, set them down, alot them an order that made some semblance of sense, they’d always just grow higher, wouldn’t they? Someday, he might not be able to see Alex past them at all. It already kind of felt like he couldn’t, like he had to strain up and against the barrier to so much as catch a distorted glance. 

Zach couldn’t run right now with the injury, so he tried going to bed early that day as his escape-hatch from everything. Sleep wouldn’t come. He couldn’t get his mind to stop. 

He had to confront Alex, really confront him. Of course he did. 

Zach wished he could play dumb to the implication of what Alex had said, but weren’t they past that? There were more important secrets to conceal than whatever it was between them. He remembered how he’d felt before their latest argument, still reeling inwardly at the idea of everything Alex had been keeping from him. At him asking Tyler for a gun. 

He could only hope this thing between them wasn’t something else that his cowardice had helped kill. 

When Zach found Alex days later, he was alone at a table in the cafeteria, arms tucked beneath the surface, shoulders pulled in. Zach suspected along with everything else that he was probably dealing with some type of withdrawal, a subtle tremor going through the line of his shoulders as Zach approached. Alex’s eyebrows were drawn together, his eyes focused down. His stubbornness always seemed at its worst when it was also the least convenient. Zach didn’t bother resisting an eye roll or the resigned clench of his teeth as he awkwardly reached out to tap Alex’s arm before he plopped down. Alex’s eyes went to him, narrowing, then back to the tray of food in front of him, all picked through but otherwise untouched. 

“The fuck do you want?”

Zach wanted far too many things right now. The list could fill all the hours of school and then some. He wanted his life back. He wanted his friend back- all of them, preferably. He wanted Alex to be as healed as Zach had thought he’d be by now. He wanted Alex. 

“I want to talk. It feels like we don’t do enough of that anymore.” 

Alex shrugged. There was a vein in his arm standing at attention, and Zach imagined his hand clenching beneath the table. Zach swallowed, forced himself not to search the room for possible witnesses, and leaned into the table, letting his arm extend. His foot nudged his friend’s, fingers brushing over Alex’s knuckles once, then landing tentatively. Alex’s eyes came up wide before settling back into a glower, but something in his face had opened up, and he wasn’t pulling away- so Zach wasn’t either. 

“You know there’s nothing to be jealous of. Chloe and I are just friends. I might have been interested in more at first, yeah, but now I’m- I like how it is. She’s a good friend, you know?”

“Better than me.”

Alex said it under his breath, and Zach wasn’t sure if he’d been meant to hear or not. Even so. 

“Dude. Don’t even do that bullshit comparison thing. There’s not- There’s no contest. Not with you.”

Alex was silent a long moment. His hand twitched beneath Zach’s. 

“Ok.”

“I’m sorry,” Zach said, forcing the words out, looking at Alex intently. “We completely let you fall through the cracks. Again.”

“I’m not your responsibility Zach.”

The words were hissed from between Alex’s teeth again, and Zach took a deep breath, drew it into his lungs with the stale air and lingering ghosts between them.

“Aren’t we all kind of responsible for each other? We don’t have to be, but we work better as a team. Like- we all rallied for Tyler. You deserve that too.”

“I really don’t.”

Couldn’t Alex just drop the fucking fight for once? Zach clenched his jaw against his rising frustration, swallowed it, then focused again on Alex’s hand in his beneath the cafeteria table. Carefully, he swiped his thumb over the top of Alex’s hand, back and forth and again and again. His skin was broken in a couple spots over the knuckles, soft but with strength underneath. 

“I know it’s probably not the best time,” Zach said at length, lowering his voice despite himself. “And I know you need help none of us can really give, too. But, like, if not now, when, right?”

“Zach.”

“Can we talk about that time we kissed? Because, like, I think I gave you the wrong impression maybe.”

Alex’s eyes flicked away from his, and Zach watched him swallow, how he edged closer to the table, how his shoulder moved like he was going to reflexively pull away but his fingers tightened against Zach’s. 

“Ok,” Alex said finally, flippant in a way that Zach knew meant he cared what Zach had to say, cared too much to be willing to show it. 

When had they stopped being willing to show one another the things that mattered?

If Zach was a betting man, he’d put money on the night of Spring Fling their junior year. On the night of the almost-shooting and of Zach and Alex’s first kiss. 

“But what exactly is the right impression?”

“That I like you. And I liked kissing you. And I don’t want that time after the dance to have been it. I want more. With you. I want... all of it, I guess. I really want to kiss again- a lot. If you want it too.”

Zach said the words as steadily as he could, though he could feel his heart racing. 

Alex looked down. 

“But only if it’s under the table or at night when no-one can see, when we can pretend it’s something else. Look, Zach- I'm- I can’t keep another secret right now.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“Then what?” 

Zach could hear the wound and the want beneath the skepticism, and he let it propel him forward. If he was doing this, he was really doing it. All in. 

“The opposite. I want to be done with the secrets. As- as many as we can be.”

Alex pulled his hand from Zach’s and swallowed again under his watch, meeting his eyes. Zach stared back, taking in the blue of Alex’s irises, the scrapes and bruises on his face, the shape of his mouth. Alex put his elbows on the table, expression narrow but without edge. 

“Seriously?”

Zach pulled his own arm from beneath the table and laid it across the surface, palm up, waiting. Alex didn’t move for a long moment, and Zach’s thoughts were racing nearly as fast as his pulse.

Had he interpreted shit wrong somehow? Or maybe Alex had been fumbling for an excuse, with the mention of secrets, trying to let him off easy. Or maybe-

Alex’s arm dropped, and his fingers caught Zach’s. There was still hesitation in his features, but he was trying now, just like Zach was. Meeting him in the middle, effort for effort.

“You’ll have to let me take you on at least one date before you get in my pants, but I’d be down with kissing until then I guess.”

There was an almost light teasing to Alex’s voice, and Zach had fucking missed that more than he’d realized. 

“So, you free for that date tonight then?” 

Alex’s laugh was a little surprised, a little stricken. 

“I guess I could make time for you.”

When the bell rang for them to start heading toward class, Alex came to meet Zach as he stood, and Zach leaned close, kissed him carefully amid the mass of their classmates. Alex’s hands gripped at the back of his shirt, bunching the material between his fingertips so hard that Zach could feel the blunt of his nails through it. He pressed closer in turn, heedless of any surrounding eyes, of the time ticking until they both had to be in first. Fuck it all. He’d waited for this for too long, and how many times had he almost lost Alex now? No more. He was holding on to Alex. Alex held on back. 

For now, it was more than enough. In fact, it was kind of like healing. 

What better way was there to pick up the pieces than together?

The bell rang again, warning them, and Alex pulled back. He looked happy, and fuck, Zach liked how he wore happiness. He’d missed seeing that, hadn’t realized how long it had been. Alex turned away, but Zach was unable to resist wrapping him in one last hug from behind, putting a kiss on the top of his head. They both lingered, Alex laughing a little in the embrace but leaning in just the same. 

They walked as close as Zach’s crutches would allow all the way to class, and when Zach sat down beside him, Alex smiled. Zach felt light for the first time in far too long. He still had secrets, but they were fewer now, and he didn’t have to be alone with them, and neither did Alex. None of them did. 

When Zach looked from Alex to the window, all he saw outside, for just a split second, was cast in gold. He thought of dawn, of things starting, sun creeping across dark and dew-damp lawns, and he let himself embrace that just like he had Alex before. Like he would again later. 

They really did deserve to be happy, didn’t they?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks all for the read <3 Feel free to come yell at me about the insanity that was this season (or anything else) at lunalitsol.tumblr.com


End file.
